Social Endeavor

By working together with the clinical colleagues, the department is also trying to contribute to 'patient care'. As part of the research projects, the department receives medicines from WHO, and all these are given to the patients of the hospital who are enrolled in the study. In addition, the department usually gets more medicines than needed for the project. These surplus medicines are given to the hospital medical store to make it available for all the patients. All these are done with proper documentation and communication with the hospital administration.

In the recent years, the department arranged Hib vaccination program for 2,315 children of a sub urban area of Dhaka. The vaccines were donated by the rotary club of Japan. The program was joiontly conducted through the Thana Health Complex, a non government organization and Rotary Club of Dhaka with the leadership of the Department of Microbiology, Dhaka Shishu Hospital.

As a part of the studies conducted by the department, the patients are occasionally provided with the support to do expensive investigations, either at the hospital or outside. However, this depends on the nature of the study. For instance, as part of the study on meningitis, the department provided hearing aids to several children who lost their hearing ability, as an after effect of meningitis.

Contributions beyond Microbiology

In addition to building capacity for itself, the department also tried to contribute to the hospital as a whole, with help from several collaborators and friends of the department.

Central Oxygen Supply at Dhaka Shishu Hospital

Central Oxygen Supply system of the entire hospital was mainly initiated and facilitated through one of our research collaborators, Prof. K. Matsumoto of Nagasaki University. The facility was installed by Bangladesh Oxygen Corporation (BOC), with the resources from Japan International Corporation Agencies (JICA) with active cooperation of the hospital director.

BICH Auditorium

Microbiology department, along with the director of the hospital, played an important role in the initial renovation of the BICH auditorium. This was done with the resources from Dr. Mostafizur Rahaman of Popular Diagnostic Centre.

Furthermore, as part of the work with the clinical colleagues, the department arranged to build cabinets for the nursing stations of ward 1 and ward 5 of DSH. A pulse oximeter, a sucker machine and an electronic weighing machine were also given to the wards.